Place: Ratings & Reviews

I was a little excited about making my first trip to beer distributor. I was ofcourse hoping to find some hard to find beers at reasonable prices. I was disappointed to find that the majority of the beers that I wanted to purchase were more pricey than what I was paying at Whole Foods. Keep in mind that Whole Foods is a gourmet retailer that generally charges a little more than other supermarkets. In the end I bought a 12 pack of Blue Moon ($9.00, it's due to expire in less than a month), a six pack of Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA ($9.00), 6-pack of Flying Dog Tire Bite ($9.00) and a few other singles. They have a pretty good selection of Eastern European beers (mostly lagers) and your standard macros. Most of the single beers on the shelves had a coating of dust, which made me concerned about if they were still good. A few of the beers that I could check the dates on appeared to be still good, but a few were close to the expiration dates. Overall, I was content with my first expedition to a distributor, but walked away with a lot less than I wanted because of the prices. I'd recommend the place, but expect to spend a little moe.

The place is really set up nice. Organized well and is definitely clean, but the selection is nothing spectacular. Sure there are several great beers here (St. Bernardus, Scalis Prestige, Corsendonk to name a few), but there is nothing out of the ordinary except for a few international brews that are of little interest to me. Beer from Macedonia is not on the top of my to be had list. All of the hard to fine aged gems that were mentioned in previous reviews seem to be long gone.

Service is non-existent. When I first called to get the stores hours I got: "Hello." Me: "Is this East Coast Beer Company?" Him: "Yeah." Me: "What time are you open until?" Him: "Seven."

With Eagle Provisions being fairly close, there isn't much reason to hit this place up.

This place is a bit of a journey for me but I thought I'd check it out since I'd heard some good things. Simple enough to find either by car or by subway.
What struck me first about this place is its organization. Everything was very neatly placed on the shelves, with all their individual bottles grouped by country of origin.
Like I have found with most of the places I've been to, this place carries a comparable number of different beers, but carries several beers that the other places do not. For instance, this place carried more Brooklyn Brewery beers than I have seen anywhere so far (seeing as how this place is in Brooklyn, makes a bit of sense). I also found Le Coq Imperial Russian Stout here (pricey for me at over $5 for an 11.2 ounce bottle).
Prices are mostly reasonable to good, with the occaisonal extreme price (both high and low) here and there.
I ventured out there cause I heard they sometimes carry Westvleteren 12, but alas, none was to be found that day.
What I liked most about this place is that it was the most temperature controlled distributor I've been to so far. It was an unseasonabley warm day but it was cool in the store.
I'll probably call ahead of time before I venture out again, but I'd recommend this place to anyone finding himself in the area.

I just visited this place after taking the N train to Costco, it's right across the street so it kind of gets in your way on the walk back to the train

The place is clean, well-organized and has a large selection of six-packs and a good selection of single bottles, quite a few Belgians and lambics, everything was organized by country of origin. The 750s and some of the more pricey stuff can be picked up separately or in cases. According to their signs though you couldn't mix-and-match out of the six-packs, and they didn't have singles of any of the sixers. Still, I was able to pick up a Quelque Chose, Gale's Conquest and a Rogue smoke ale. They had some 2000 Harvey's Christmas there too.

The thing's I'd knock about this place though: the pricing was all over the map, beers are stored in the window, the place was about 80 degrees (granted, it was snowing outside but still), the woman at the counter would appear and disappear and when she bagged my 3 bottles she just tossed them in a plastic bag, no paper bags or anything to keep them from banging against each other like wind chimes.

A decent enough beer store in what must be a beer-vacuum neighborhood.

How did this place end up in Sunset Park? It's kind of a mystery. This beer distributor and retail store is located right underneath the BQE in the industrial part of town. You'll see factories, warehouses, and of course, porn video stores. Ahhh, sunset park.

The selection was amazing. There were an impressive amount of domestic bottles, but what was really amazing was the expansive international selection of beer. It was just ridiculous... endless selections from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.

I had to give this place a 5.0 for selection for three reasons: first of all, the most obvious - it has a lot of different brands to choose from. Second - the options of quantity purchased. At this place, you can buy a single bottle - a six-pack - or a case, and they will all be priced accordingly. Last, consider it's location. At most other delis in this neighborhood, you'd be lucky to find Guiness or Bass.

I have my concerns though. An incredible amount of this beer was just standing out on the shelves. For most of the beer, it might not matter, but also having them in the window? I mean, come on. The light is shining on them for half of the day. Also, there are a lot of bottle-conditioned beers in the store, and live yeast above 90 degrees? You know the answer to that one.

You should check this place out though. Hopefully they receive enough business to stay afloat for a while. It's kind of a gem.